Last week at Chicago's Guaranteed Rate Field, A's starting pitcher Chris Bassitt took a 100-mph line drive off the bat of White Sox outfielder Brian Goodwin to the face. Bassitt was unable to get out of the way or get his glove up in time and took the full brunt of the line drive to his right cheek.
Fortunately, Bassitt didn't take any damage to the eye area, but he did suffer a facial fracture. He was kept in Chicago while the doctors waited for the swelling to go down before performing surgery. Fortunately, that transpired Tuesday.
The A's released the following statement:
"Chris Bassitt had successful facial surgery today in Chicago with Dr. Peter Revenaugh at the Rush Medical Center. Dr. Revenaugh was able to stabilize and plate the tripod fracture with good fixation and debride other small fractured bones from the incident. Chris is stable and resting comfortably and will have follow-up appointments upon his arrival to Oakland. The A's anticipate Bassitt will return to the Bay Area later this week."
Under the circumstances, that has to qualify as good news.
In terms of on-field matters, there's still no set timetable for Bassitt's return to the mound. The smart money would be on 2022 instead of some time this season, though.
Bassitt, 32, was in the midst of a career year. The first-time All-Star is 12-4 with a 3.22 ERA, 1.05 WHIP and 154 strikeouts against 34 unintentional walks in 151 innings. He was also widely considered one of the A's clubhouse leaders.
The A's head into afternoon action Tuesday having lost seven of their last nine games. The trail the Astros by 3 1/2 games in the AL West and the Red Sox by one game for the second AL wild card spot
